It's About Time - The Big Return

Hello again, well it's been a while , three weeks or so. I was on a road trip to northern Alberta, northern British Columbia, The Yukon and Alaska. I put 5500 kilometers on the car, along with a lot of dust. The road may be paved but there are many sections in the north under reconstructon and very dusty. A few years ago I sailed in to Skagway , Alaska on a cruise ship and thought - it would be great to return sometime via road and drive the Alaska Highway. Along the way we visited Grande Prairie, Fort Nelson, Fort St John, Watson Lake, Whitehorse, Haines Junction, Carcross, Teslin, Dawson Creek, Mayerthorpe, and Destruction Bay. All great places to send postcards from.
Since my last blog update 3 weeks ago, I have received lots of great cards, from great place all sent by great people, like Johan, Ravindra, Jean Pierre, David, Jobbo, My Lovely Teena, Evan and Ryann, Dominique, Carla, Barbara and Kim-Newfie Girl. There are a few others , too. Over 50 cards , so there's not much excuse for not getting a few blogs out over the next few days. So let's get started.

First is a card sent by two of my grandkids. Evan and Ryann recently travelled to Ontario for 9 or 10 days. So I got a card from Niagara Falls, showing the Canadian Horseshoe Falls. Evan wrote that he got soaked from the mist. I know that feeling, it happened to me years ago when I took Evan's Dad and Uncle to Niagara falls, when they were young boys.

Here's a few facts about The Falls. Approximately 90 % of the Niagara River flows over Horseshoe Falls. The falls is 52 Metres in height and one-fifth of all the fresh water in the world cascades over Niagara Falls. Roughly 750,000 gallons of water go over the falls every second.

     
Evan used a World Heritage Site stamp from 2014. It shows Old Town Lunenburg in Nova Scotia. Thanks Evan and Ryann, Love you both. It was great having you out for the sleepover a couple nights ago.

Now on to my second card. It arrived from Sri Lanka, and shows the Seven Maidens Mountain Range. Not to be confused with The Three Sisters in Canmore, near here.
Sri Lanka issued a great stamp back on May 22, 2003 for World Diversity Day showing the Seven Maidens.

Ravindra used another of the Solar System set from 2014. This one shows the ringed planet , Saturn. I now have 7 of the 10 in the set. Only Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune are missing.

This next card is from The Rock - not The Rock that I originally came from, but Gibraltar, between Europe and Africa. You can easily see the Strait of Gibraltar between the two on Johan's card.

Johan used a 2015 definitive featuring Queen Elizabeth. It is from
 a set of 5.

Here's a Maximum card from Australia, showing Tasman Bridge. The bridge was constructed between 1960 and 1964. It is 1,396 metres long and 60.5 metres high. It crosses the Derwent River.

This maxi-card was issued March 15th of this year. The stamp , 1 of 3 in the Bridges set, had it's First Day of Issue in Gladesville.   Kim  or Newfie Girl sent this card along.


Thailand is up next. Here's the Marble Temple, in Bangkok. Wat Benchamabophit is a Buddhist Temple , one of Bangkok's most beautiful temples and a major tourist attraction. Construction of the temple started in 1899. It contains 52 Buddha statues. The temple was featured in the Amazing Race 9 as the 10th and final pit-stop.

A nice selection of stamps on this one, as always with any card from Jobbo. On the left is 1 of 4 in a 1997 set celebrating the Centennial of Cinema in Thailand. In the middle , from 2012, is 1 of 4 stamps celebrating the 150th Anniversary  of the Birthday of Prince Damrong Rajanubhab. On the right , from 2002, is a stamp honouring 100 Years of Thai Banknotes.

My Thailand stamp collection continues to grow thanks to Jobbo.


These two next cards, most likely the last for today, arrived from Castine, Maine, USA. Castine is one of the oldest towns in New England and even North America. It predates the Plymouth Colony by seven years. The Castine Post Office , from where these 2 came from, was built in 1814 and is the oldest Post Office in continuous operation in the United States.
Here's a common sight along the Maine coast. A lobster shack , Russell's Lobster Shack in fact, with lobster pots and buoys.

Three wonderful stamps on this one. All from a 2014 sheet of 16 in the Vintage Circus Posters set. In my opinion the best and most attractive set of stamps put out by the United States in a long, long time. Just my opinion of course.

Here's the complete sheet, what do you think ? Yes or no, like or dislike, let's do a poll.

Now for the last card, another one from Castine, Maine. This one shows a typical foggy day along the Maine coast.

Doug from the Castine Post Office used 3 of 5 stamps in the March 2015 issue celebrating the works of Mexican artist Martin Ramirez.

There you have it, the first update in a while, I hope it was worth waiting for . More to the point of course, I hope somebody decided to revisit this site after such a long time of no activity.
Today, thanks for cards go out to Doug, Jobbo, Kim, Johan, Ravindra and of course Evan and Ryan , my grandkids.

Thanks for coming by today, hope you'll come back soon. My next update will be a good one, I'm going to try and get through all the cards from David and Jean Pierre. And, you know that'll be a lot of cards. It'll also contain a new stamp- issuing entity for me. number 263. But you'll have to come back to find out where that is. Take care, Cheers.